August 2014 - Volume 34, Number 8

Features

It was going to be a typical late-summer day — muggy with a high in the upper 90s. Normally, I would have stayed inside under the air conditioning, but on this particular morning I was off to Black Bayou Reservoir near Benton.

After an hour chasing sparse schools of striped bass across boat lanes, creek channels, coves and finally out into the big lake without a single strike, Donny Hood stopped for a second, calmly set his rod down and moved to the driver’s seat of his 22-foot Blazer Bay bay boat dubbed the Miss Judy.

By the turn of the 20th century, Louisiana’s deer herd was in trouble. Non-stop hunting by people trying to put meat on the table, and market hunters supplying restaurants with venison and leather clothiers with hides was pushing the herd to the brink.